Presumably from here I can use the PDF e-book to search for specific games in SCID on the go, if I wanted to do that.

I would prefer to use the PGN 'ChessPub Guides' in your SCID myself - these are exactly the same as the PDF chapters, and there should be a simple way to click from any of the positions directly to the appropriate annotated games.

Minor complaint: it would be nice to have a seamless web-only experience. One feature suggestion I have would be an online HTML e-book that has direct references to games. Or to have an opening explorer like many other chess sites have.

We did have something like this for some openings 12/15 years ago, but it was rarely used. Most of our subscribers are very serious players, of course, and all (or almost all) are proficient with databases, and we could never hope to match the power of ChessBase or SCID with a web-only experience.

Since no one has answered, I'll provide an answer to the setup that I got working. Basically export all the PGN and import into "SCID on the go" for my android phone. I was initially under the impression that this wasn't going to work because SCID throws a bunch of import error messages. But it does in fact create the database and doesn't drop any games, despite the errors/warnings emitted.

Presumably from here I can use the PDF e-book to search for specific games in SCID on the go, if I wanted to do that.

Minor complaint: it would be nice to have a seamless web-only experience. One feature suggestion I have would be an online HTML e-book that has direct references to games. Or to have an opening explorer like many other chess sites have.

Can someone explain how I can get value out of the PDF e-books? They provide good overview, and ample game references, but as far as I can tell there is no way to go from the game reference to the actual game. The game references in the PDF look like anchor links but don't go anywhere, and the site search is not able to surface the games if I copy/paste the game reference directly into the search bar. So, the best I can do, is look at a reference like "Short-Shirov 2002" and be like, "hm, well this is the Caro-Kann, and the year is 2002, so I guess I have to go back and scour the 2002 archives looking for that game in the 1. ....e4 section".

Also given that I don't have ChessBase (so the playable e-book is out), I'm wondering what the expected content navigation experience is supposed to be. Like, assuming I haven't been a subscriber for 10+ years, and all the content is new to me, and I want to start by catching up on a handful of specific variations. I don't see any reasonable way to go about that, because the site seems to be geared towards someone who has been on the site since the beginning, and reads the updates on a month by month basis, and only really cares about the new updates for this month.